File Organization Quotes

I save everything. I have these carefully organized file boxes. Somewhere in there is a section of the 'New York Times' where I wrote 'The Border Guard' in the margin.

Computers are hierarchical. We have a desktop and hierarchical files which have to mean everything.

We have persistant objects, they're called files.

Before I undertake a lengthy project, I have usually given much thought to it over a period of years. My files are filled with likely subjects - which perhaps, one day, I will develop.

I like files. I like editing a CSS file without necessarily having to edit an HTML file. I like fixing a problem by replacing a corrupted file with a clean one. Maybe I'm set in my ways, but I don't consider it a hardship to open a folder or replace a file.

I keep all my work and files and kung-fu movies on my laptop because sometimes you travel, and the Internet is slow.

And also it's an ever-gathering process. If I pick up the Sporting News or some sports publication and there's an article on somebody and I think I might see that player, I will tear it out and put it in a file, and I have a looseleaf book so when we're going to play that particular team I take out all these clippings and things I pulled out, I go through them, highlight them, put them in the book.

Develop a good filing system.

Dropbox, with its emphasis on good old-fashioned hierarchies, is superb at automatically saving one original of each photo I take, whether shot with a phone or a fancy camera. No loops, no duplicates, no confusion.

Whenever anything bubbles up, I have to put it down. I have bits and pieces all over my hard drive.

A lot of times you can lose the MP3s - it's a lot of labor to be finding it again, putting things back up. You gotta back up, back up, back up.

I now rely on a scanner, which reproduces the passages I want to cite, and then I keep my own comments on those books in a separate file so that I will never confuse the two again.

I just go to lunch. And I never know when something is going into the file and something is not.

Poor fellow, he suffers from files.

The easiest thing to do is put someone in a file of somebody you already know. 'Hey, you remind me of Sam Kinison' or 'You remind me of Richard Pryor.' That's fine, because I know that's the process. Eventually, my own file will be created.

I didn’t like it [computer] when I first began using it. Where it’s helped me a lot is in nonfiction which is a kind of different process. You’ve got research, you’ve got your notes, You can block out what you want to work on for the next 10 pages and put it in another file, and then you can kind of carve it into shape

An unlimited-length file name is a file. The content of a file is its own best name.